The Daily Stoic - What Stoic Rules Make Life Less Erratic? | A Cure For Procrastination

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be a Stoic.Gregory Hays, one of Marcus Aurelius’s best translators (the one we worked with on our beautiful premium edition), writes, “If he had to be identified with a particular school, [Stoicism] is surely the one he would have chosen. Yet I suspect that if asked what it was that he studied, his answer would not have been ‘Stoicism’ but simply ‘philosophy.’”---And with today's meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, Ryan discusses why Marcus Aurelius viewed procrastination as a form of arrogance.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the Premium Leather Edition of Meditations.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic's illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. What stoic rules make life less erratic? Marcus really is actually never claimed to be a stoic rules make life less erratic? Marcus really has actually never claimed to be a stoic. Gregory Hayes, one of Marcus really is his best translators, writes that if he had to be

identified with a particular school, stoicism is surely the one he would have chosen. Yet I suspect that if asked what it was that he studied, his answer would not have been stoicism, but simply philosophy. He then notes that in the ancient world, philosophy was not perceived the way it is today, played a much different role. It was not merely a subject to write about or argue about, Hayes says, but one that was expected to provide a design for living, a set of rules to live by. That's what this philosophy is. It's a design for living, which is great because Asenica said, life without design is erratic. So what were some of Marcus's

rules? What did philosophy design for him? Well, here's a couple that appear in meditations. Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Don't be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. Limit yourself to the present. Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't be overheard, complaining, not even to yourself. Limit yourself to the present. Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed. And you haven't been. No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Life is complicated. It's exhausting. Creating rules won't solve all those problems, but it will help you ensure that you stay on the right path and not let the complexity and nuance of each obstacle life throws at us to compromise the big, high standards that we know that we hold.

And I do think Hayes is the best translator of Marx's Relius. That's the one that I first picked up now all these years ago and he's the one that we chose to work with when we did our sort of leather Bible version of meditations. It's got Haze's great intro where today's quote comes from, it's also got a bio of Marcus from me and then I think the best most readable, readable lyrical translations of Marcus as Marcus was meant to be and you can grab that at store.dailystoke.com and I'll live to it in today's show notes. When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory. But the new podcast Sports Explains the World brings you some of the wildest and most surprising sports stories you've never heard, like the teenager who wrote a fake Wikipedia page

for a young athlete and then watched as a real team fell for his prank. Diving into his Wikipedia page we turn three career goals into eleven, added twenty new assists for good measure. Figures that nobody would, should, have believed. And the mysterious secret of a US Olympic superstar killed at the peak of his career. Was it an accident? Did the police screw up the investigation? It was also nebulous. Each week, Sports Explains the World goes beyond leagues and stats to share stories that will redefine

your understanding of sports and their impact on the world. Listen to sports explains the world on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to sports explains the world early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. A cure for procrastination. To the stoic procrastination almost looks like a form of delusion and entitlement. Who is to say you'll even be around next month or next week to deal with it? If it's important, they say, don't wait. Do it now.

As Mark Serely says, if it needs to be done, do it with courage and promptness. Procrastination seems to make things easier, but it damns us to a low-grade, gnawing state of anxiety. Is that how you want to spend this week? Any week? Your last week? Ask yourself, what am I avoiding? What can I handle today instead of tomorrow? What can I do promptly and bravely right now? And then we have one quote from moral letters from CETICA and two from ARCAS realias. From CETICA then we have one quote from moral letters from Seneca and two from Mark's Relias. From Seneca, we have anything that must yet be done virtue can do with courage and promptness for anyone would call it a sign of foolishness for one to undertake a task with a lazy and

begrudging spirit or to push the body in one direction in the mind and another to be torn apart by wildly divergent impulses. It can be done well. It can be done well now. That's the idea. And then Marx really says, this is the mark of perfection of character to spend each day as if it were your last without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending. And then Marx really again, meditations 822, you get what you deserve. Instead of being a good person today, you choose instead to be one tomorrow. You know, I really like this frame of reference, thinking about procrastination as a form of arrogance.

Who says you'll be around to get to it tomorrow? Who says you can afford to put it off? And so as I'm writing, I tell myself, look, I don't know what's gonna happen. All I'm writing, I tell myself, look, I don't know what's gonna happen. All I know is that I gotta close it up today. I gotta do everything I'm capable of doing today. I gotta wrap it up, give my best,

do my best, do as much as I can, so that if I do die tomorrow and someone comes, someone I love pulls up my laptop and goes, where was Ryan on that book? It won't be finished, but they'll see that my stuff was in order, that I got as far as I could, that it wasn't a scattered mess, that I hadn't been putting stuff off,

that I hadn't been waiting until later. I think I'm proud to say that as a writer, I've never missed one of my publisher deadlines. In fact, I almost always deliver early. That's, I think, one key to procrastination. Set good deadlines, generous deadlines, that you're capable of beating and then work every day. And so you beat them, people are impressed, but really you budgeted some extra time there. I think that something that strikes me when I deal with people who procrastinate, right? It's like,

you assign something with someone that, you know, they've got to do this or that. And then, it's like, it's due on Monday. And then Friday, they're like, oh, I couldn't get the file open. They're like, what have you been doing the last week? Right, you should have known that the file didn't work, the second you started this project. And so you often find that people,

and this is where that idea of the resistance comes in, people delay getting started. Stephen Pressfield says, it's not that we say, I'm never gonna write the novel. We say, I'm going to write the novel tomorrow, right? So we put off the start date over and over as the procrastination.

We tell ourselves we're gonna do it, we're just lying to ourselves about what we're gonna do it. And I think this is why the practice of momentum or is so important, if you go, I don't know if I have tomorrow, but I do have right now, I do have 20 minutes that I can dedicate to this. I do have an hour that I can dedicate to this. I can have that conversation that I needed to have

with the person, I can close this thing off. I can get caught up on this or that. Don't do it later, do it now, cross it off. Anything that can be done today, anything that could be done tomorrow must be done today. That was MacArthur's rule as well. The Stokes and successful people forever have been battling against procrastination and the resistance. It's a fact of life. That's why Presfield calls it a war of art. And I hope whatever it is you have to do today, you take this message seriously and you go do it. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music

app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.